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Old 01-03-2013, 06:34 PM   #10
Versus
 
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Join Date: Oct 2010
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Originally Posted by Versus View Post
To be honest? I don't think the DoD can do anything about these problems. If the military is an extreme expression of our national culture, then the problem lies within the country, not it's military. In a recent study, 1 in 4 women reported being SA during their deployment. Obviously, it's unacceptable for the military to tolerate this, however, I think the root cause is the culture that tells us that it's okay.
I feel like I should say more about this.

Right now, the army's solution to racism, suicide, mental health, SA, ect. is to get as many people as possible into a hot room every 6 months and take a few hours to show them a power point about the programs in place to resolve problems that come up. An example would be "if you or one of your subordinates is sexually harassed, these are the two methods of reporting it and these are the 3 organizations who you can go to to help resolve it."

Only once have I been to a class where they tried to make people aware of the manifestations of **** culture or why our normal behavior is wrong, and I think that's pretty indicative of the problem as a whole; The DoD says "this is degrading combat readiness, fix it." Experts are brought in from the civilian sector to establish a program to mitigate it, and units select a representative to learn about those programs, and they are expected to make referrals and teach their unit about it's existence. However, those representatives don't need to understand the problem in order to hold that position.

It was easy to get away with kicking the shit out of a guy in my platoon and report them for calling me the n-word in Afghanistan because everybody knows that's wrong, but I would have a much harder time getting help (help is moving either you or them to a different unit) for anything else because not everybody, to include the EO representative, knows it's wrong. In fact, don't ask don't tell don't pursue was repealed when I was in Afghanistan. Our training on that consisted of "Don't ask, don't tell was repealed; It's okay to be gay. Tomorrow, wake up is at zero-five-thirty, mission brief is at zero-six, SP at six-fifteen. We're doing another clearing mission with the ANA rifle platoon and..."

The DoD can try to make people re-learn their cultural norms. Actually, it's now doing that as part of it's new sexual harassment and assault prevention program. In doing so, they are trying to fight against a person's lifetime of behavioral norms and prejudice. That's why, when I went to that last class that tried to educate everyone, the people forced to go just rolled their eyes, played on their phones, and went to sleep when the speaker said something about victim-blaming. It's kind of like when Saya told me about dude-bros who went to one of the WRC's presentations and got up saying "Fuck this," the only differencing being that the army can force you to go and make you stay. So instead of getting up and leaving, they just turned their brains off. It effectively is the same thing.

So yeah. Obviously, it's better then nothing. It just won't help nearly as much and I know it won't fix shit. The DoD is basically in damage control mode and once the numbers go down, no matter how long it takes, there won't be any more improvements. There isn't a passionate desire for change. The same applies for when women can chose career fields restricted to them. There will be a "There's 5 new female privates coming to the platoon. Go to the sexism power point training and continue to treat them like you are."
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